Le Tour de Dyslexia: The Send-Off

Oh man, long time no post. My lack of presence on my blog for the past few weeks has been due to two things: no new developments of the tour, and huge amount of school work. The past three days have been full of planning and preparation. Out of those three days came some good news and some bad news. Ok so for the bad news, because of unforeseen work conflicts, Lexi will only be taking part in the first two days of the tour at which point she will take a small detour to her New Jersey home. The other bad news is that the direction of our tour has changed drastically and no will no longer take along the east coast. That brings me to the good news though. We finally have a route and I am pretty excited about it!

a;



The whole thing should take 12 days and will take us through the Delaware Water Gap, around and through the Catskills, and finally through the Amish Country of Pennsylvania. The daily average needed to complete the tour is not that much, only around 55, so we will be able to spend some quality time at the cooler locations.

We are leaving early Monday (tomorrow) morning and will be back for my boy Alex Gambogi's Grad party. I don't know if I will be able to get my hands on a computer while we are gone for updates but if I do I'll post them. Dan will be taking tons of sick pictures that I put up when we get back as evidence of us actually going on the tour. This will probably be my last post before the trip, so goodbye and remember that I love you.

Hugs and Kisses,

Nick

Le Tour de Dyslexia: To a Mouse Update

It looks like an out-n-back tour is inevitable. Train won't check bikes, Buses stink, and shipping our bikes back is to expensive.

Le Tour de Dyslexia: To a Mouse

"The best-laid schemes o' mice and an' men
Gang aft a-gley"

I was reminded of these famous lines from Robert Burns' poem To a Mouse when our plans for the tour recently went "a-gley" or as sometimes said, "awry". Today we (Lexi and I) began to look into buying the train tickets from Portland to Wilmington. We first learned that we would have to box our bikes in order to check them as luggage, a hassle that we were not too thrilled with. Upon calling Amtrak a second time we would receive even worse news. Apparently, even if we did box our bikes, it would be useless because Amtrak does not even offer checking luggage from Boston to Wilmington, meaning there would be know way to get our bikes back with us on a train. So now what? There are not too many other options, and I do not actually know what we are going to do yet. I think the next best option is to take a bus. I never really thought I would ever take a Greyhound bus for long distance transportation. Usually only runaways take busses to get somewhere. The good thing about taking a bus would be that it is a lot cheaper. Besides that I do not really know of any other options except making the tour a loop, which is not that desireable of an option. Oh well, trains arn't really all that cool anyway.

Lord Byron

Lord Byron was the last of the canonized Romantic poets. He was the first "rockstar" of poetry as well as a lady's man. I am supposed to be writing a paper about him right now but for some reason I would rather blog about him. His words and works were poignant and witty, making him a very quotable person. Here are some of his more humorous quotes:

• Absence - that common cure of love.
• I have a great mind to believe in Christianity for the mere pleasure of fancying I may be damned.
• Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; the best of life is but intoxication.
• (In regards to the crude language that he used in one of his writings & "tooled" means to have sex) It may be bawdy, but is it not good English? It may be profligate, but is it not life, is it not the thing? Could any man have written it who has not lived in the world? and tooled in a post-chaise? in a hackney coach? in a Gondola? against a wall? in a court carriage? in a vis a vis? on a table? and under it?
• I have great hopes that we shall love each other all our lives as much as if we had never married at all.

Le Tour de Dyslexia: Test Pack

This past weekend I had some free time (not true free time, but free time that was made when I decided to not start work that I should) and so I decided I would test pack my bike. I got my packing list out, made my bed, which is slightly relevant, and began to get all of my gear laid out. First, I neatly organized everything on my bed so that I could see what I was actually bringing and so that I could take a sweet picture for everyone to see (see really sweet picture below).


That picture has almost everything that I had on the list in it. The only thing that it is missing is a few things that I still need to buy. Anyway, after I laid out all of my gear I began to pack it into my panniers and handlebar bag. Everything ended up fitting real easily and I actually have significant extra room. I tried to weigh all of my bags to see how much they were but the only scale in the house was very wrong, unless I got real fat. I would like my load to be somewhere around 30-35 pounds total. After my failed attempt to weigh everything, I continued to pack everything onto my bike for the first time and see how it would ride fully loaded. I got scared when the bike began to tip very easily as I was walking it to the road but as soon as I got on it and got it into motion, it became a lot easier to control. The only problem was that my feet were hitting my panniers every time they came around, so I had to adjust the panniers to sit further back in the bike. We are now only 20-21 days away from the trip. I just got word that it will most likely have to be pushed back an extra day. We still have to be back by the 13th though so that means we will have to put the same amount of miles into less days. I am not too daunted by that because Dan and I went for a 26 mile ride on Saturday and we felt really good, even though we will be doing three times that amount on the tour. That's about all I have to say right now. The following pictures are of my bike fully loaded, looking sweet.

And

On that same note...

I Know I'm out doing myself with all of these posts butt...

It's me! As a baby. Naked.

Le Tour de Dyslexia: Dirty Underwear

One pair of underwear for two weeks? Absolutely. When packing space is precious, there has to be sacrifices, but honestly, I don't think bring one pair of underwear is even a sacrifice. I don't even know if I would even consider bringing zero pairs of underwear on the trip to be a sacrifice. Allow me to explain. First this is a biking trip. That means that most of the time I will be wearing spandex. Underwear under spandex = chaffing and I want no such thing. Secondly, the other bottoms I am bringing are my Prana shorts, my Patagonia bathing suit, and my Prana Pants. The Patagonia bathing suit has a liner so no underwear is needed there. For my Prana shorts, I have gone without underwear in them on numerous occations, especially when it is hot like it will most likely be on the tour, so no underwear is needed there as well. The only time I could see my self needing underwear is on the train ride back home or if I need to wear my Prana pants.

I hope I have vindicated my bring of only one pair of undies on the tour. On to a more interesting idea though, if anyone would like to see me go the whole Tour without any underwear, I am low on money and willing to give up my one and only pair of underwear for a small donation. Actually, I will consider doing a lot of things on the tour for a small donation, so if anyone has any ideas let me know and I will think about them.

Le Tour de Dyslexia: Gear List

One of the coolest things in the world is gear, well, at least to me. Here is my preliminary list of what I am planing on taking on the tour. I have provided a link to any of the really cool gear.

Bike and Bags

Bike: 2008 Bianchi Volpe link
Rack: Blackburn Ex-1 Expedition
Panniers: Ortlieb Backroller Classic Black link
Handlebar Bag: Detours Cruiser link

Camping Gear

Tent: MSR Zoid 1 link
Sleeping Pad: Therm-a-rest link
Cooking: Jetboil link & MSR Pocket Rocket link
Sleeping Bag: EMS 25 degree down
2-3 canisters of Iso Pro
Small Frying Pan
Bowl
Mug
Head Lamp
Toiletries (toothbrush, paste, deodorant)
First Aid

Bike Gear

Bike multi-tools
Chain lube
Spare Tire
2-3 spare tire tubes
Pump
Bike Lock
Bungies

Clothes

Sandals
Running Shoes (only is there is room)
Prana shorts
Prana pants?
Sunglasses
Patagonia bathing suit
Socks (3 pairs)
Technical shirts (3)
Rain shell
Warm clothes (Prana sweater, running tights)
T-shirts (2-3)
Cycling shorts (2)
Biking Gloves
Marmet Jacket
Helmet
Beanie
Underwear (1)

Misc.

Playing cards
Cell Phone
Cell Phone Charger
Pens
Maps
Book or 2
Notebook
Directions/ Maps
Sunscreen